Discover the secrets to optimal brain health and cognition with leading expert Dr. Gregory Kelly.
- Optimal brain function and cognition depend on getting enough sleep, whereas inadequate or lack of sleep can negatively impact focus and memory.
- To support brain health and cognitive function, nootropics containing nutrients like choline and essential fatty acids can fill nutritional gaps.
- Taking attention restoration breaks, especially in natural surroundings, can help restore focus and boost creativity while improving cognitive performance
- Optimal brain function and cognition depend on getting enough sleep, whereas inadequate or lack of sleep can negatively impact focus and memory.
- To support brain health and cognitive function, nootropics containing nutrients like choline and essential fatty acids can fill nutritional gaps.
- Taking attention restoration breaks, especially in natural surroundings, can help restore focus and boost creativity while improving cognitive performance
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NewsTranscript
00:00 And the idea is that if we force ourselves to stay away
00:04 and have great willpower,
00:06 our brain's constantly clicking in and out of
00:08 one of these micro, really brief periods of sleep.
00:12 - Welcome to Beyond Unstoppable,
00:14 the podcast that explores the intersection of biology,
00:17 psychology, and technology.
00:19 Here is your host, Ben Angel.
00:21 - In today's episode, we'll be diving deep
00:23 into the world of advanced clinical nutrition
00:26 and cognitive enhancement with expert, Dr. Gregory Kelly.
00:30 Dr. Kelly is an expert in nootropic stacks,
00:32 which is supplements that support brain health
00:35 and cognition.
00:36 We'll explore the science behind these supplements,
00:38 including the difference between synthetic
00:41 and natural options,
00:42 and how the Neuro Hacker Collective
00:44 formulates their nootropic stacks
00:47 based on nutritional deficiencies
00:49 to find the optimal arousal zone for focus.
00:52 Additionally, we'll examine the importance of sleep,
00:55 body clock synchronization,
00:57 and compounding good habits for future benefits.
01:00 Dr. Kelly's passion for improving brain health
01:02 shines through as he shares his knowledge.
01:05 And if you like what you hear,
01:06 please give us a rating and review.
01:08 Your support means the world to us
01:10 and helps us reach more listeners
01:13 who are ready to become unstoppable.
01:15 - This episode is brought to you by Ben Angel's new book,
01:18 The Wolf Is At The Door,
01:19 How to Survive and Thrive in an AI-Driven World,
01:22 presented by Entrepreneur.
01:24 Get an exclusive sneak peek and pre-order
01:26 at thewolfbookhub.com.
01:28 - Dr. Kelly, it's an honor to meet you here today.
01:31 Now, I gotta say, you may not know this,
01:33 but you actually helped write three books
01:37 in the last three years,
01:38 which I think equated to almost 300,000 words.
01:43 So thank you.
01:44 - Oh, my pleasure.
01:47 - And what we'll do is I'll explain
01:48 how you actually helped me achieve that
01:50 a little bit later on in the podcast.
01:52 But first, I just wanna ask you,
01:54 your background, you have such a diverse background,
01:57 but one thing that sparked my interest in your bio
01:59 is that you worked in the field
02:01 of advanced clinical nutrition.
02:04 What led you to even begin investigating
02:08 that particular area?
02:09 - So it goes back to when I first graduated university,
02:14 I went into the US Navy,
02:15 and when I got in,
02:16 it was the first time that I ever was responsible
02:19 for feeding myself many of my meals.
02:22 And it occurred to me,
02:23 I didn't know literally anything about what I should eat.
02:26 I just always consumed whatever people put in front of me.
02:29 So at the time I had a really good buddy
02:31 that was your gym-wrapped kind of guy
02:34 that was into weightlifting and eating well,
02:37 and asked him for advice.
02:39 And he directed me to a book that was popular
02:41 in that time period,
02:43 I believe was "Meat to Win," Nelson Hobbs.
02:45 It was a high-complex carbohydrate,
02:47 low-fat type of approach to diet.
02:50 And reading that at the time,
02:52 it occurred to me, wow,
02:53 I thought people that were feeding me
02:55 knew what they were doing,
02:56 and they clearly didn't.
02:57 So that's where it jump-started.
03:00 I then became like the weird officer
03:02 that often brought their own food,
03:04 or was really a picky eater.
03:06 And from there, it's just continued to grow and evolve.
03:10 So it goes back to really that formative time period,
03:12 my early 20s.
03:14 - And when you were 18 at the University of Bridgeport,
03:17 advanced clinical nutrition,
03:19 were there particular topics
03:20 in the realm of mental health
03:22 that you were focusing in on at the time
03:24 where you realized,
03:25 okay, we're giving everyone medicine and drugs,
03:28 but we're not necessarily looking
03:29 at nutritional deficiency.
03:31 - Yes.
03:31 So the way I architected that particular course
03:35 was I actually started,
03:36 the first lecture was about body class, circadian rhythms.
03:39 The next one was about sleep.
03:41 And the one after that was about cognition.
03:44 So what I tried to do is take
03:46 what I think of almost as the foundational things,
03:49 and then teach my students both about that,
03:51 but then how diet and nutrition interface with that.
03:55 And often my experience is people work backwards.
03:58 So they all like, wait, let's go after diet and weight loss.
04:01 But weight is much more challenging to get a handle on
04:04 if you don't get these other basics first.
04:07 So the body plot, sleep, appetite as well,
04:11 they're all regulated by part of the brain
04:12 called the hypothalamus.
04:13 So think of those things
04:15 as the illusion of control.
04:18 So we all think we're in charge of those,
04:20 and we are to an extent, if we're managing them well.
04:23 And if we're not, that part of our brain
04:25 increasingly puts pressure on us to get what it needs.
04:28 So that area of how the brain interacts
04:31 with both our nutritional choices
04:33 has always been fascinating.
04:34 - How much control do you think the general population
04:37 has over those aspects right now?
04:40 We've got all of these changes
04:41 happening in artificial intelligence,
04:44 diet, social media, we've been through a pandemic.
04:49 It's almost as if everyone seems to be
04:51 in a state of hypervigilance.
04:54 - I would say in that hypervigilance state,
04:56 relatively low, certainly compared
04:59 to what we assume we have.
05:00 So sleep's a great example.
05:02 All those things I mentioned are self-regulating.
05:04 And what that implies is that the brain cares about that
05:07 and keeps track of what it needs
05:09 and then takes efforts to meet that need.
05:12 And those efforts are often what scientists would say
05:15 are biobehavioral changes in our,
05:17 behavior changes in our biology.
05:18 So sleep would be a big one.
05:20 I remember back to the late '90s,
05:22 some close doctor friends thought sleep was the enemy.
05:25 You know, I can't afford to sleep
05:27 more than four or five hours a night.
05:28 It was a badge of healthiness.
05:30 You could get by with less.
05:32 And at the time I was like, this is ridiculous.
05:35 You don't get to choose how much sleep you need.
05:37 That's chosen for you.
05:39 You either need it or biobehavioral things kick in.
05:43 And one of the most prominent behavioral ones
05:47 is called microsleep.
05:48 And idea is that, you know, if we force ourselves
05:51 to stay away and have great willpower,
05:54 our brain's constantly clicking in and out of
05:57 one of these micro, really brief periods of sleep.
06:00 And that same thing occurs
06:03 with any of the self-regulated drives.
06:05 If we don't manage them well, we don't meet that need,
06:08 there's departure or in the case of microsleep,
06:11 the brain's just taking over and saying,
06:13 I'm going to do this for you since you're refusing to do it.
06:17 - And what are your thoughts on specifically
06:19 the phase of deep sleep?
06:21 One thing I noticed when I was speaking to Dr. Patrick Porter
06:24 from BrainTap was that when they did a test on me,
06:28 they believed that I was actually phasing into deep sleep
06:32 in the middle of the day,
06:33 which obviously isn't the best state to be in.
06:36 And that could have been a time zone shift
06:38 from Australia to here.
06:40 But through the research, is it true that toxins
06:45 that build up during the day get released
06:47 during that deep sleep phase?
06:49 - So I, it's usually thought of as like
06:52 the homeostatic sleep model,
06:53 but there's two things that occur.
06:56 So one, the longer we're away,
06:58 the more the pressure to sleep builds up.
07:01 And that's called the adenosine signaling system,
07:03 but adenosine is the metabolite,
07:05 it's a breakdown product of ATP.
07:07 And the brain uses a ton of energy,
07:09 ATP is the primary energy molecule in the body.
07:13 And the other thing that counters that,
07:15 the reason we don't go into deep sleep
07:16 after being awake a couple hours is our body clock.
07:19 It's clock dependent alerting,
07:22 usually how they refer to it.
07:24 And the idea is that when we have a really fit body clock,
07:28 it actually stays off that need to sleep
07:30 and compresses sleep into about an eight hour window
07:33 that coincides with what we think of as
07:36 normal sleep-wake cycles.
07:38 Darkness and sunrise is the beginnings and ends of that.
07:41 And so my guess, if your body clock was disrupted,
07:45 that's gonna change the orientation temporarily
07:48 in time when deep sleep would wanna occur.
07:51 - In relation to achieving focus and productivity,
07:54 I couldn't have been able to write these books unless I,
07:57 the illusion of control, I guess,
08:00 to a large extent from what you're saying,
08:02 try to control all of these external factors,
08:05 particularly sleep.
08:07 What level of impact does sleep have on our cognition,
08:11 specifically achieving that state of flow?
08:15 - So quick story.
08:16 I remember when I was teaching at University of Bridgeport
08:19 in the naturopathic program,
08:20 one day a student came up to me after a class
08:23 and was fairly distressed and distraught
08:25 and fundamentally said, "Dr. Kelly, I need help.
08:28 I'm trying to read my textbooks for my different courses
08:32 and feel I would have to read the same thing over and over.
08:35 And it's just not sticking."
08:37 And my first question to this student was,
08:39 "Well, how much sleep are you getting?"
08:41 And their response was,
08:42 "Well, I can't really afford to get much sleep
08:44 because I have to do all this studying."
08:47 So they were sleeping about four or five hours.
08:49 And my response was,
08:51 "Well, what you're doing isn't studying.
08:53 Studying would imply this idea of focus,
08:55 attention, and ability to concentrate."
08:57 And they would have been far better served
08:59 getting enough sleep to have much better cognition
09:02 in the day.
09:03 Instead, they had this illusion they were studying,
09:06 but without focus,
09:08 we generally heard this idea of 10,000 hours to expertise,
09:12 which isn't absolutely true, but it's a truism.
09:14 But without the ability to focus,
09:17 without that focus to attention,
09:19 what fundamentally would be the idea of focused practice,
09:23 10,000 hours won't get us any degree of mastery.
09:26 It's just 10,000 wasted hours.
09:27 So I think sleep is so overlooked
09:30 because without quality sleep,
09:33 our ability to direct our focus
09:35 and sustain it during the day is so hampered.
09:38 - And it's also linked to the acquisition of new skills,
09:41 right, in terms of the consolidation
09:44 of everything that you're learning.
09:45 - Even a nap will help.
09:47 So a lot of things will get almost put in
09:49 what would be thought of as the short-term budget
09:51 as we acquire new information or skills during the day.
09:54 And if we don't allow sleep to do its job,
09:57 they never get transferred to the long-term storage
10:00 where we then retain them.
10:01 So they just literally flow right through.
10:04 - Now, are you of the viewpoint that a nap during the day
10:08 is one of the best things that you can do?
10:10 - So I think it depends on the person.
10:12 My personal story is if you can sleep, you need sleep.
10:15 So if that means taking a nap,
10:18 then by all means, take a nap.
10:19 Now, one of the things during the week,
10:22 Monday through Friday,
10:22 I generally take nootropics in the morning,
10:25 sometimes between waking and 9 a.m.
10:27 And what I know personally is
10:29 I don't have the need to nap on days I do a nootropic stat.
10:34 They allow me to stay productive, focused
10:37 through that lull that might normally happen
10:39 and where a nap would feel good.
10:41 We're on a weekend, I usually won't do a nootropic.
10:44 And if I'm reading on the beach or in the sun,
10:46 it's not uncommon to close the book
10:48 and take a 20-minute eyes closed nappy.
10:51 - I found that, like I grew up on a cattle farm
10:55 in South Australia.
10:56 So I'm very much from the hustle until we die culture,
10:59 which has taken a lot to train out of me.
11:01 But I don't call it a Nana nap,
11:04 I call it a Jackie Chan power nap.
11:06 So I can reframe that I'm not being lazy,
11:09 I'm being effective and productive.
11:12 But when it comes to nootropics,
11:15 I think the first question a lot of people ask is,
11:17 what are nootropics?
11:19 - Yeah, so easiest way to think of them
11:21 would be the idea of smart pills.
11:24 Something that fundamentally adds resources for the brain.
11:28 So I guess stepping back,
11:30 the jobs of the brain often are bucketed.
11:34 So cognitive scientists would say,
11:36 okay, this bucket is memory, this one's language,
11:40 this one's executive functions,
11:41 this one's, they usually would say complex attention.
11:45 Another one would be social cognition,
11:47 some things like empathy.
11:49 And the way at least I think of those different skills
11:53 is more like a pyramid.
11:54 So that the foundation of the pyramid
11:57 would be the complex attention,
11:58 which is things like being alert enough to be focused
12:03 and then focusing your attention and avoiding distractions.
12:06 That's all your base level.
12:07 And if we don't have a solid foundation,
12:09 we can't get to social cognition,
12:12 we can't get to executive function
12:13 'cause all those rely on being able to focus our attention.
12:17 So at the most fundamental level,
12:19 what nootropics do is they're things
12:21 that support that complex attention foundation.
12:24 They more than anything tend to help with that alertness,
12:29 directing our attention, avoiding distractions.
12:32 And then quite often they layer on additional things
12:35 that would help with the executive function.
12:38 Just think of that as a basket of skills
12:40 an executive needs to really thrive in their busy life.
12:43 But nootropic, usually they're stacked to piece together
12:46 are things that really help
12:48 with those particular two groups of skills.
12:51 - Because there are two types of nootropic,
12:53 are there in terms of synthetic versus natural sources?
12:56 - Yeah, that would be one way to slice it.
12:58 There's like the original person that coined the term
13:01 nootropic was a pharmacist, chemist,
13:04 researcher from Romania.
13:06 And the original molecule he discovered
13:09 and coined the term nootropic was called paracetam.
13:12 So the racetam, which would be a synthesized chemical
13:16 and racetams is not as a category.
13:18 I think of them as a gray area.
13:20 They're not dietary supplements
13:22 and they're also not for treating drugs
13:24 because they've been around so long,
13:26 there'd be no money in making them treat a drug, I find.
13:30 So there's those more chemical end.
13:33 And then there's a lot of nootropics
13:34 that are either plant compounds or dietary.
13:39 So I mentioned the 10,000 hours
13:41 and that idea of focusing attention.
13:43 One of the key neurotransmitters you hear about
13:45 with nootropics is with pseudocholine.
13:47 And it's an easy way to think about pseudocholine.
13:50 Would be, it's about relevance.
13:51 It's about, wow, pay more attention to this.
13:55 This is important.
13:56 - Before we continue,
13:58 "Beyond Unstoppable" is brought to you
14:00 by Ben Angel's new book, "The Wolf is at the Door.
14:03 How to Survive and Thrive in an AI Driven World."
14:07 Get your exclusive sneak peek
14:08 and pre-order at thewolfbookhub.com.
14:11 Now back to the show.
14:14 - And that combines that idea
14:16 of both of the attention bucket,
14:18 but then learning and memory.
14:20 So we need a pseudocholine to focus attention,
14:23 to get the brain locked in,
14:24 and to have the plasticity to reshape the brain
14:28 to accommodate the learning and memory we have
14:30 from that focused session.
14:32 So pseudocholine, like in the story, is made from choline,
14:35 which is something we get in the diet,
14:38 but the Institute of Medicine thinks
14:40 somewhere 80 to 90% of us
14:42 don't quite meet the recommended amount.
14:44 So choline is that can get through the blood-brain barrier.
14:47 So things like pseudocholine or alpha-GPC are nootropic
14:51 in part 'cause they're the resources needed
14:54 for this super important neurotransmitter.
14:57 - And do you think that nootropics help
14:59 to somewhat fill a gap in terms of nutritional deficiencies?
15:03 - For sure, I think you had made that distinction
15:06 chemical and natural.
15:08 So a lot of the ones that would be dietary components
15:11 are filling gaps, and that's part of the reason
15:14 that they're helping the brain.
15:15 And concept to lock in is this idea
15:18 that they'll sometimes use the term brain essential nutrients.
15:21 So there's certain things the brain can make for itself.
15:24 It doesn't need us to get them in the diet.
15:26 Cholesterol would be one.
15:27 The cholesterol in our diet doesn't make it
15:29 through the blood-brain barrier.
15:31 The cholesterol in the brain, it makes for itself.
15:33 But a lot of the other things,
15:34 and I usually just label those as resources,
15:37 and brain essential nutrients.
15:39 These are things like some of your essential fatty acids,
15:42 choline, vitamins.
15:44 If we're not getting enough of those in the diet,
15:46 the brain's gonna be starved for them.
15:48 And since the brain is a voracious consumer of energy,
15:52 it's usually general estimate is the brain consumes
15:56 about 20% of our body's energy supply in the day.
16:00 We'll suffer first and hardest when resources are scarce.
16:04 And a main resource are things that are involved
16:06 in these neurotransmitter building, recycling,
16:10 and then fueling brain energy.
16:13 - And what about your own personal experience
16:17 in terms of nootropics?
16:18 What led you to that point to look at
16:22 this particular aspect?
16:24 Were you struggling with a lack of focus or brain fog,
16:27 or was it just a natural progression from where you began?
16:30 - More a natural progression.
16:32 One of the things I've always found interesting,
16:33 both when I was a naturopathic student and then teaching,
16:36 many come to it because they had some issue
16:40 and a naturopathic doctor or holistic practitioner
16:43 helped them with that issue.
16:44 And they're like, "This is so cool.
16:46 I wanna embrace this."
16:48 And for me, that really wasn't the case.
16:50 So it's more of my brain is just super curious
16:53 about learning new things.
16:55 And I would say that I've always been driven
16:58 by this concept of what does health look like
17:01 and how do we do more to get better?
17:04 And the brain is, if not the most, certainly a hub
17:08 that impacts so many of other things.
17:10 And as a naturopathic doctor, it's semi-comical,
17:13 but when I was a student, we would,
17:16 I'm doctors that we would shout out in the clinic.
17:19 Quite often, naturopathic doctors would tell
17:21 these new patients, "Oh, you need to change your diet
17:23 and get more sleep and start exercising
17:25 and do these supplements."
17:27 And there'd be this list of all these changes to make.
17:30 And those all fall on,
17:33 I'll just call it the willpower reservoir.
17:35 Change requires something.
17:36 Willpower, energy.
17:38 And they'd be asking these people
17:40 to make these crazy diet, lifestyle, et cetera, changes
17:44 without often adding additional resources for the brain.
17:47 And without the brain having more resources to drop on,
17:52 it's probably tap out.
17:53 So that's where the naturopathics come in.
17:56 For me, the idea that I would be asking people to do more
18:00 without providing them more support
18:02 just seemed, in hindsight, ludicrous.
18:04 And so that's part of where it evolved to.
18:06 I need to be better at supporting the brain
18:09 if I'm asking people to make a lot of changes.
18:12 - Yeah, well, I actually credit you
18:14 for your work with formulation.
18:17 So then you're a hacker collective.
18:20 Because before I wrote my book, "Unstoppable,"
18:22 which was a 90-day mission to overcome depression
18:25 and get my brain back,
18:27 I was ready to give up my writing career
18:30 and put the pen down.
18:31 That's how bad the brain fog was.
18:34 So talk to me about how do you come up
18:37 with these formulations and the amount of research
18:40 that goes behind it?
18:41 'Cause I can imagine that it has to be extensive,
18:44 especially when you're dealing with the brain.
18:47 - Yeah, so while we do it, NeuroHacker Collective,
18:50 it's really a step-by-step progression.
18:52 The first thing will be just doing minimalistic research,
18:55 try to understand the system,
18:57 the landscape of what's out there.
18:58 'Cause if there's already great products in the area,
19:01 we may not wanna do it.
19:03 There's no need for a solution,
19:05 there's already a great solution.
19:06 So we'll do that market research phase.
19:09 And then if there looks like there's a better solution needed
19:12 then we go really deep into, so forth, the brain.
19:15 We'd learn about the different cognitive systems,
19:19 the neurotransmitters, energy.
19:21 Like energy is horrifying.
19:24 Like without good energy production, mitochondria,
19:27 it's really hard to sustain any of these things.
19:30 So we'll do this crazy deep dive
19:33 on becoming smart in that topic area.
19:37 And then during that, we're usually compiling
19:39 this huge list of potential ingredients
19:42 that we could conceivably use.
19:45 And then it gets fun, but only if you're nerdy.
19:49 We'll then read the studies on every ingredient
19:52 and then summarize those and rank them one to five.
19:55 Say, okay, this ingredient was five stars.
19:57 Like this would be four
19:59 if we want to do this for the brain as an example.
20:01 This one's a one or two, probably not.
20:03 Threes and fours are a little bit more borderline.
20:07 Like, oh, there's value here,
20:08 but is this going to add another capsule
20:11 or is it duplicating something else?
20:14 And then when all of that is done, which could take a year,
20:19 then we'll sit down and team will then make trade-offs.
20:23 What's the best formula that we can build
20:26 that's going to deliver these specific results to the brain?
20:30 And then after that, we'll build it and do a small study.
20:34 We'll get it in the hands of people
20:36 and see if in fact it actually does that in the real world.
20:40 And if all of that happens and goes right,
20:43 then it becomes a point product.
20:46 - And do you, during that formulation phase,
20:48 do you also consider
20:51 what are the main nutritional deficiencies
20:53 at a population level
20:55 that we may have to factor in for?
20:58 - Absolutely.
20:58 So that's a big part of how we would come up
21:01 with some of the dosing.
21:03 So I'm not, and Nora is not neurohypercollective,
21:05 I'm more is better mindset.
21:08 I'm much more Goldilocks.
21:09 For most things, there's a just right amount.
21:13 And so something like choline as an example,
21:16 most people don't get enough choline,
21:19 but that doesn't mean most people get no choline.
21:21 There's on average, maybe 100, 120 milligrams gap
21:26 between they're getting
21:28 and what would be a more optimal amount.
21:30 So the goal isn't to give all of the choline
21:34 that you should get in a healthy diet,
21:35 it's to make sure that you're filling that gap,
21:38 especially in terms of nutritional things
21:40 like amino acids, choline.
21:43 I'm very much of the mindset of let's figure out
21:46 what amount is gonna help the most amount of people
21:48 and make sure that's what we're supplying.
21:51 - And what is the process in relation
21:54 to helping people get into their say,
21:57 optimal arousal zone for focus?
21:59 For me, I look at focus and think,
22:02 all right, have I had too much caffeine
22:04 and I've exceeded it and now I'm hypervigilant,
22:06 I'm scared and I can't focus,
22:08 or I've had too much and then I crash
22:11 and then I can't do anything.
22:12 How do you adjust it?
22:15 Because the older I get and working on a new book
22:19 and having to do a lot of the research on social media
22:22 due to artificial developments happening online in real time,
22:27 I'm finding that harder to strike that balance
22:29 for as I previously mastered it before.
22:33 - Well, that's a great question and this is a generality,
22:36 but I tend to think of there's two completely different things
22:40 that interfere with us being able to get focused
22:43 and stay focused.
22:45 On one side, you would have what I would almost say
22:47 like method, like lack of motivation, lack of drive.
22:50 So to get that person to that sweet spot of focus,
22:54 something has to be added in,
22:56 motivation, drive into the picture.
22:59 The other end would be what I would usually say frazzled,
23:03 like the brain's took, there's too much going on.
23:06 So that person, it's more calming to move them back.
23:09 They don't need the arousal as much
23:11 as they need calming to move back to center.
23:14 And so those can be quite different formulations
23:17 or if like while your mind was intended for both.
23:21 So there's things like a low amount of caffeine,
23:25 but again, we think of it as just the right amount
23:28 rather than too much.
23:29 But there's things that balance that caffeine out
23:32 that help with focus.
23:33 So stacking the caffeine with something called ane,
23:37 which naturally occurs in green tea as an example.
23:40 And it's a real calming amino acid like thing
23:43 that helps take that edge off caffeine.
23:46 So instead of caffeine,
23:48 it's called the Yerkes-Dodson law.
23:50 Think of like an upside down U.
23:52 And the idea is something like caffeine,
23:55 just right amount will take us to the sweet spot at the top,
23:58 but too little, we won't quite get there.
24:00 Too much, then it's easy to start performance
24:03 slides down the other way and suffers.
24:06 And what's super common in our current world
24:09 is there's crazy high amounts of caffeine
24:11 and things like energy drinks
24:13 and what people would consume at a coffee shop.
24:17 And I think of the nootropic range,
24:19 just right amount of caffeine for focus and productivity
24:22 for the vast majority of us is 50 to 200 milligrams.
24:27 So a lot less than most people are getting.
24:31 And if they're already getting too much,
24:33 they're gonna be in that hypervigilant
24:34 and do much better with things like,
24:37 Pocopha is an Ayurvedic herb,
24:39 that's more calming in nature or Alfainia,
24:42 I mentioned tend to help take that frazzled brain
24:45 and calm it enough that it gravitates.
24:48 So adaptogens would be the general term
24:52 for things like that,
24:53 that tend to create that normalizing
24:55 no matter which end of the spectrum we happen to be on.
24:59 - And would you say one of the biggest challenges
25:01 maybe with creating a formulation is people taking it
25:06 and then on top of having excessive amounts of caffeine
25:10 and then sending themselves through the roof,
25:12 which full disclosure I've done before,
25:14 I don't know if there isn't anyone who hasn't,
25:17 but you learn very quickly.
25:19 - We were just at the Biohacker Conference
25:21 in Orlando recently.
25:22 And at shows like that, we'll offer great volume mind,
25:24 which is our premier tropic stack
25:27 and then a simpler stack called Follia Focus.
25:29 So they overlap in terms of how you would experience both
25:33 in a day or a week and a couple of times given people both
25:37 and they've taken both and then they come back,
25:39 they're super feeling it,
25:41 but now there's like the amount of caffeine
25:43 and those two combined,
25:44 you're at that high end now of that nootropic zone.
25:47 And if you already had say coffee or caffeine somewhere else
25:50 you probably tipped over into maybe ask
25:53 what would be the ideal sweet spot
25:55 to be as productive and focused as you'd want.
25:58 Where one of those, especially in an environment like that
26:01 is usually great for people
26:02 because in the simple way to think about it
26:05 and going back to this idea that brain energy
26:08 ultimately drives everything.
26:11 And our brain is always trying to conserve energy
26:15 or become more efficient.
26:16 So if we talk a bit about learning earlier,
26:19 the reason our brain learns things
26:23 and becomes more expert in large parties to save energy,
26:26 it takes way less energy for a virtuoso pianist
26:30 or guitarist to play their instrument
26:32 than it would take your eye.
26:33 Like we'd make bad music
26:34 and it would take a lot more brain energy to do it.
26:38 And so a lot of what I think of nootropics doing
26:41 is they help that energy budgeting too.
26:44 So that's why I think of a good nootropic
26:46 isn't just something you take in an hour later,
26:48 you're feeling like cool, this worked,
26:50 I'm like in the zone.
26:51 It's how are you doing six hours later?
26:53 How are you doing at the end of your day
26:55 when you get home to your loved ones?
26:56 Are you an angry beast, bad and irritable
26:59 or are you like still the best version of yourself?
27:02 And so when I think of good nootropic stacks
27:05 and when we make nootropic stacks with the qualia label,
27:09 we're not only thinking,
27:10 "Oh, what's gonna happen an hour from now?"
27:12 We're fundamentally wanna know
27:15 is at the end of the day that person still
27:17 got enough resources and mental energy
27:19 to show up and be their best version of themselves.
27:23 And so that sustained like ability to both focus,
27:27 be a good version of yourself through the day,
27:30 that gets back to these ideas of like,
27:31 yeah, it worked on this attention bucket
27:34 and probably exactly that function.
27:35 But now social cognition, we didn't sacrifice that.
27:39 And so when we're creating formulas,
27:41 we're trying to holistically upgrade
27:43 as many things across the board.
27:45 - And what is the price that we pay for being too focused?
27:50 So for example, when I review one of my books,
27:53 I typically do it incredibly quickly.
27:56 So I'll read 90,000 words in one day,
27:58 but then there's a price I pay the next day.
28:01 How far can we extend the runway in relationship to focus?
28:06 - I would argue that most things have that golden lock.
28:09 So where there's just right amount and that beyond that,
28:13 we, for lack of a better word,
28:14 almost over-train in an exercise sense,
28:16 like performance separates.
28:18 And there's often a residual effect
28:21 to over-training from exercise,
28:22 muscles or joints say.
28:24 And that I don't think our brain is particularly different.
28:27 If we force it to do way more, a certain task,
28:32 then it'll like, we'll often be able to top it out,
28:36 we'll power through it,
28:37 but it's making trade-offs to do that.
28:39 And so what's usually recommended by neuroscientists
28:43 is what I call attention restoration.
28:46 But think of these as periodic breaks through the day
28:49 to restore our attentional cognition capabilities
28:52 and what that allows.
28:53 So think of it when you were doing what you just said,
28:56 reading all of these things in a day,
28:59 you're working your brain very uneven.
29:01 You're really reliant on the frontal cortex,
29:04 that all those systems that help with,
29:06 like it's usually called the salience network
29:08 or the attention network, those networks,
29:10 and executive function,
29:11 when those are just being tasked to run over and over
29:14 and over, and they'll run shorter resources.
29:17 And then you obviously have enough willpower
29:19 to just stick through it.
29:20 But what would be often better for people
29:22 is after about an hour, maybe two max at that,
29:25 you take some kind of a restoration break.
29:27 And the best attentional restoration
29:30 is usually nature for most people.
29:32 And it's what they will sometimes think of
29:34 as soft attention.
29:35 So watching something with nature,
29:38 so clouds drifting, water running, fish in a fish tank.
29:42 And we don't have to actually be in nature,
29:44 we'll get a lot of that restoration
29:45 watching a video of that.
29:47 But what often happens in our modern world
29:49 is people will take their break
29:51 and then look at their phone or social media
29:53 that are now, instead of restoring attention,
29:56 they're using often those same attentional resources
29:59 just for a different thing.
30:01 So they're draining the tank even more.
30:03 And so I often ask,
30:05 couldn't we do a product for creativity?
30:07 And creativity is almost the antithesis of focus.
30:10 And creativity emerges when we do attention restoration.
30:15 It's not something we could take a pill
30:17 and magically have it made of,
30:19 especially if we were just in a state
30:21 that we wanted to be focused.
30:23 So I just think we do a really poor job
30:25 currently in our society,
30:27 appreciating the importance of attention restoration.
30:30 - Are you a practice of visualization
30:34 or even gazing meditation
30:36 to help make those connections to creativity?
30:40 - So the subset of people who notice what the percent below,
30:43 say three to 5% maybe of the population
30:45 that have what's done a bit of aphasia.
30:47 So we're non-visual.
30:49 So if you said, Greg, picture a red rose,
30:52 my brain just doesn't run that software,
30:56 but I'm really kinesthetic.
30:57 So for me, just closing my eyes
30:59 and putting my attention there is really restorative.
31:02 - For the past couple of years,
31:03 I've been practicing gazing meditation.
31:06 So finding a point on the horizon
31:08 and just kind of softly gazing that,
31:11 but making sure I'm having an extra dose
31:13 of L-theanine before it
31:15 to kind of realign the brain chemistry.
31:17 And I found that before I sit down to write,
31:20 I can go maybe four hours without losing your focus.
31:25 What's your thoughts on that kind of practice?
31:27 - Oh, I think that's great.
31:29 So I think in psychedelics,
31:30 they use the idea of sat in setting a lot.
31:33 So unfortunately, I'm right by the ocean
31:35 in Southern California.
31:36 So even now while we're speaking,
31:38 I can glance over my computer
31:39 and see the ocean in the distance.
31:41 And what I do through the day,
31:43 but especially in the morning
31:45 is I just go for brief walks down to the beach,
31:48 around the block, look at the flowers,
31:51 stop and look at a beach.
31:52 All of those things to me,
31:54 help my creative process immensely.
31:57 And then you mentioned stacking theanine
31:59 and theanine is great
32:00 because it helps de-stress the brain,
32:02 helps shift the brain into a more relaxed state of focus.
32:07 So what can come from this is how I tend to describe
32:10 what theanine does,
32:11 where too much caffeine gets us that,
32:13 like you said, hypervigilant type of focus,
32:16 which isn't as productive.
32:17 - No, not at all.
32:19 That's the last kind of focus that I need,
32:22 especially for working and writing.
32:24 So I'm gonna ask you one final question.
32:27 If you could go back to your 20 year old self,
32:31 what knowledge would you wanna impart on him
32:35 in relation to here are the key mechanisms
32:38 you need to work on to achieve a level of focus
32:42 so you can achieve your career objectives?
32:45 What knowledge would you share with him?
32:47 - I think I would just really go back
32:50 to the most foundational things.
32:52 So what I did back then,
32:54 I had the exercise piece pretty dialed in.
32:56 I would sacrifice almost anything else to exercise.
32:59 Back then, I did a good job of reasonably eating well,
33:03 given the constraints of being on a ship a lot.
33:06 What I did really poorly with
33:08 was not realizing the importance of body clock and sleep.
33:12 As an example, if I was out at sea,
33:16 off Hawaii, Monday through Friday,
33:18 I'd come back Friday night.
33:19 And even if I was exhausted,
33:21 I would go out till two in the morning with my friend
33:24 instead of, like, oh, sleep would be a better use
33:27 of this time, catching up on that,
33:29 or not realizing that we can create social jet lag.
33:33 This idea that if we're going to sleep at, say, 10 at night,
33:36 Monday through Friday, and then decide to stay up
33:38 till two on Friday and Saturday,
33:40 that creates the equivalent of jet lag
33:42 for the rest of our social career.
33:43 So some things like that.
33:44 I didn't know that I would have been
33:46 great for that younger person.
33:48 And then just the general idea of compounding,
33:51 like good habits over duration compound,
33:54 just like financial good decisions compound over time.
33:57 So I would have really pressed to finish
34:01 that younger version of me,
34:02 really get this idea of compounding.
34:04 Oh, I did this and I didn't get this immediate gratification
34:07 or benefit, but these are investments for this future.
34:11 So that they're really going to thank me.
34:14 - Absolutely.
34:15 Well, Dr. Kelly, I can't thank you enough for showing up.
34:18 And like I said, I credit you
34:19 for helping me get my brain back
34:21 so I can continue my work as an author.
34:24 So thank you so much.
34:26 - My pleasure, Pat.
34:27 - Learn more about Dr. Gregory Kelly
34:29 and his work at neurohacker.com.
34:31 And if you haven't already,
34:32 subscribe to Beyond Unstoppable
34:34 and visit thewolfbookhub.com
34:37 for your exclusive sneak peek of "The Wolf is at the Door."
34:40 And stay tuned for next week's episode